CAFC Tells CIT to Send Sample of The Comfy to Appeals Court in Customs Dispute
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Sept. 23 directed the Court of International Trade to transfer a certain physical exhibit to the appeals court in importer Cozy Comfort's customs case on the classification of its oversized pullover, The Comfy. Cozy moved the Federal Circuit without opposition to transfer a physical sample of The Comfy and its retail packaging to the court so the sample is "available for inspection by this Court and the parties at oral argument" (Cozy Comfort v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 25-1889).
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The court noted that Cozy's opening brief refers to how The Comfy is "shrink-wrapped and packaged for retail sale." The court granted the motion, adding that the CAFC's clerk shall "maintain custody of the exhibit in the clerk's office." The three judges assigned to the case "may determine whether the exhibit will be made available at oral argument," the court noted, though the judges have yet to be assigned to the matter.
Cozy filed its opening brief in the customs case last month, arguing that the trade court was wrong to find that The Comfy is a pullover and not a blanket (see 2508270047). The importer said the trade court made three legal errors, the first of which is that the judge "misinterpreted" the Federal Circuit's criterion for classification under Harmonized Tariff Schedule heading 6110, which provides for pullovers.
The second legal error related to the trade court's interpretation of the CAFC's criterion that an "article 'covers the upper body'" as meaning "an article of Heading 6110 can also cover the lower body without any length limitation." The third error concerned CIT's application of the Supreme Court's test for classification of articles under Chapter 61 in Arnold v. U.S. "by reviewing only whether an article is frequently worn" and not reviewing whether the article is "worn or recognized as an article of dress," the importer said.